Art : a new history / Paul Johnson.

Includes index.

Contents : 1 Painted caves and giant stones -- 2 Ancients Egypt and the origins of style -- 3 Palace art in the Ancients Near East --4 Greek art: idealism versus realism -- 5 Rome: an art set in concrete -- 6 Monotheism: Basilica, Mosque and Tomb -- 7 Dynamics of the Dark Age North -- 8 The climax of Cathedral Art -- 9 The rise of creative individualism under Christianity -- 10 Rediscovery and transformation of Graeco-Roman culture -- 11 The Apotheosis of the statue -- 12 The great masters of Italian painting -- 13 The Roman climax of art and its confused aftermath -- 14 The new realism of the seventeenth century -- 15 The first great landscape paintings -- 16 The golden century of Spanish art -- 17 The Dutch Attain 'The perfection of professional art' -- 18 Towns, palaces, churches, gardens -- 19 Splendours and mysteries of the eighteenth century -- 20 Classical and religious revival -- 21 The western penetration of Asia: India, China, Japan and their art -- 22 The watercolour and its global spread -- 23 Romanticism and history -- 24 Painting the American world and its wonders -- 25 The related arrival and sombre glories of Russian art -- 26 The internal conflicts of nineteenth-century art -- 27 Art and the realities of the industrialised world -- 28 Skyscrapers, art Nouveau, art Deco -- 29 The beginnings of fashion art -- 30 The Resurgence of the primitive -- 31 The rule and ravages of ideological art -- 32 The dangers and the oportunites of twenty-first-century art

English